Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

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Piers Lane brings his admired virtuosity and innate musicality to Scriabin’s Études. To listen to them as presented on this album is to hear the gradual but total transformation of Scriabin’s musical language from the earliest significant composit ...» More

Piers Lane’s performances of the complete Scriabin Préludes are bold and compelling, matching technical bravura with a rich vein of poetry and colour and communicating the composer’s vivid and exceptional imagination. Beautifully recorded and supe ...» More

Details

The two brief Études Op 49 No 1 and Op 56 No 4 date from 1905 and 1908 respectively, a period which leads through the completion of The Divine Poem to a very different orchestral masterpiece, The Poem of Ecstasy. Scriabin wrote many sets of short pieces for piano; these chart his development and sometimes inaugurated a new phase in his music. However, the three pieces of Op 49 led to a temporary break with the Belaiev publishing house: the firm refused to pay more than fifty roubles each for such short works, while the composer, short of cash, demanded double that sum.

Op 49 No 1 has a curious hopping gait, as if about to leave the ground—a later, abandoned project was a symphonic poem, Icarus—and its swiftly moving tonal centres and tritonal bass steps mark a further shift towards the late style.